How We Got Trump, Part MCMXLII
Sophisticated Foreign Policy Actors or Ignorant Buffoons?
There is, in corners of the dense and befuddled world of national security/foreign policy debate, a persistent yet unproven assertion that the execrable phenomenon of Trump and Trumpism was ushered in by two decades of “adventurous” foreign policy begun in the response to 9-11 and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. So this story goes, the Bushies screwed everything up and the “establishment” rolled right along with them. In the meantime, the benighted white working class of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio bore unequal sacrifice in pursuit of “forever war”. Trump’s neo-realism, his rejection of primacy, his insulting treatment of friends and allies—all played into the development of a movement within the electorate to embrace a smaller role for the United States in world affairs. In other words, foreign policy was an important determinant in the outcome of the 2016 election.
This strikes me as not only incorrectly reading the electorate, but hubristic and arrogant. On the one hand, we are told (often by many making the above assertions), that Trumpism is the populist political excretion of racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, and anti-science buffoons. On the other, we are told that these buffoons have embraced sophisticated positions on the role of the United States in the world and how it should devote its power. The “establishment” did not recognize these learned and considered policy positions and so it paid the price as a result when they voted in numbers to bring us Trump.
Never MIND that on the campaign trail throughout 2015/16 Trump got some of his heaviest applause when he not only suggested widening the war on ISIS, but then somehow “taking” their oil in the process.
Never MIND that on the campaign trail and thereafter, the Trump CONSTANTLY talked about building the greatest military forces the world had ever seen, raising the uncomfortable and unanswered question “toward what end?”
Never mind that many of those asserting this position are unable to reconcile the (obvious) counter, that we are to understand that their (realist, offshore balancing, restrainer) approach to the world was validated in the outcome of the 2016 election because Donald Trump was making their case. Watch the Cato crowd’s heads explode when you point out the uncomfortable realism of Donald Trump. Pointing to the rise of Trump as a RESULT of exactly the kind of foreign policy yearnings this group advocates really doesn’t do the whole idea a great deal of credit, now does it?
Never mind that I really don’t think that Donald Trump was a realist, or a restrainer, or an offshore balancer, but a charlatan and a carnival barker who could not articulate a foreign policy if it were handed to him, and to the extent that anything ever DID get done in his administration it was IN SPITE of his leadership rather than BECAUSE OF it.
Never mind that foreign policy as an important presidential issue is “…more honoured in the breach than the observance…”
Donald Trump was not elected President because of a rejection of aggressive and primacist foreign policy. Donald Trump was elected president because we have a troubled country ill served by its politics, amplified by media malpractice, and atomized by social media into competing identities. He was a fixture in living rooms for over a decade, he was fresh, brash, and uncouth. He connected with darkness in American hearts, and he provided the veneer of legitimacy to impulses and feelings once properly understood as inhumane. Putting aside his wealth and Ivy League education, he was “one of us”.
There are valid reasons to criticize post-Cold War US foreign policy, and some of them are persuasive. Tying the rise of Trump to that policy is just rhetorical base-stealing, and to the extent that Trump did rise in opposition to it, serves to cast it in a more positive light.
Bad News For The Navy
A memo signed by the Acting Secretary of the Navy providing guidance to the Navy and Marine Corps as they pursue budget planning for the FY 23 budget and beyond has found itself onto the interwebs. I am familiar with this type of guidance from my working life, and it is remarkable that there isn’t some form of classification or marking on the document guiding how it should be handled and by whom. That said, it is—after the release of the FY 22 Defense Budget on the Friday before Memorial Day—just the latest sign that the Biden Administration is simply not a serious group of people when it comes to thinking about waging great power competition. Although the signer of this document is a holdover from the Trump team (the selection of a Secretary of the Navy seemingly not high on the list of priorities) it is clearly the work of someone carrying out direction from above. In it, the Navy—which is currently faced with recapitalizing its large surface combatant force, its attack submarine force, and its carrier air dominance force—is told to pick one to prioritize, and put off the others. Additionally, development of a submarine launched cruise missile is terminated. Not mentioned ANYWHERE is the important bill associated with recapitalizing the Navy’s ship-based helo force, something currently known as the “Future Vertical Lift-Maritime Strike” effort.
Folks, we are in trouble. The Reagan Navy buildup left us with a large and powerful Navy, and while networking and weapons are superior to those of the 1980s (meaning a one -for-one replacement of platforms is not necessarily required), a ship or a plane or a submarine can still only be in one place at a time, and we are not replacing them at a rate consistent with the growing threats. The nation depends on forward deployed naval forces to do the lion’s share of the work in deterring adversaries from aggression, and our ability to do so is in relative and absolute decline. Winter is coming.